Mem­o­ries of Septem­ber

a po­si­tion — and be­lieve me when I say I’m not en­gag­ing in false mod­esty here — I nei­ther needed at that point my life nor wanted. But the CBC brass de­cided I was their man — a mere six years, iron­i­cally, af­ter hav­ing fired me (with to­tal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion) for be­ing a drunk. But by Septem­ber of 1989 I had a few years of so­bri­ety un­der my belt. As it turned out, things at the CBC did work out just fine (at least as far as I was con­cerned).

Still another Septem­ber, this time in 2003, turned into a life-al­ter­ing month, a dev­as­tat­ing oc­ca­sion when I was di­ag­nosed with colon can­cer that quickly spread to my liver, ne­ces­si­tat­ing mul­ti­ple surg­eries and heavy bouts of chemo­ther­apy, and ul­ti­mately brought my day-to-day ca­reer to a pre­ma­ture con­clu­sion, a de­ci­sion prompted by the fact that longevity did not ap­pear to be in my life’s pro­gram. But 16 years later, the prog­no­sis looks to have been de­light­fully off-base.

Per­haps the sad­dest of my Septem­ber mem­o­ries oc­curred six years ago this month when my fa­ther passed away, cre­at­ing a void that even time seems reluc­tant to fill. Bob Wake­ham has spent more than 40 years as a jour­nal­ist in New­found­land and Labrador. He can be reached by email at bwake­[email protected]